Lesson Plan Über Alles

Critical Thinking Assessment Rubric

ILO #1 – CRITICAL THINKING

Students apply critical, creative and analytical skills to identify and solve problems, analyze information, synthesize and evaluate ideas, and transform existing ideas into new forms.

• Identify vital questions, problems, or issues and evaluate solutions.
• Analyze, compose, and assess the validity of an argument.
• Compute and analyze multiple representations of quantitative information, including graphical, formulaic, numerical, verbal, and visual.

	0=Missing	1=Developing	2=Proficient	3=Exemplary
Identify	Introduction or identification of problem is not present	Problem is identified or introduced in minimal or simplistic way	Problem is identified or introduced clearly and with support	Problem is identified or introduced clearly and with all relevant information necessary for full understanding
Analyze	Analysis, solution, or plan is not present	Analysis, solution, or plan presents limited or biased perspective	Analysis, solution, or plan presents effective or comparative perspective	Analysis, solution, or plan presents full, comparative, or original perspective
Conclude	Conclusion or synthesis is not present	Conclusion or synthesis is disconnected or oversimplified	Conclusion or synthesis is clear and connected to relevant information	Conclusion or synthesis is logical, well-informed, and strongly connected to relevant information

i Adapted from:

Palomar College Learning Outcomes Council, http://www2.palomar.edu/pages/sloresources/rubrics/critical-and-creative-thinking-rubric/

Make a Critical Thinker's Manifesto

The Critical Thinker’s Manifesto

One. Literacy is taking the red pill over the blue pill, which means you choose to be a critical thinker, not an obedient, mindless consumer.

Two. Literacy is language plus critical thinking.

Three. In Defense of Being Alone: Critical thinking requires solitude in general and solitary reading specifically. You need to quote Sherry Turkle and Louis C.K.

Four. Critical thinking repels hype.

Five. Critical thinking repels propaganda.

Six. Critical thinking repels chicanery.

Seven. Critical thinking repels binary arguments in favor of nuanced ones. See page 6 of From Inquiry to Academic Writing.

Eight. Critical thinking explores opposing views (and does not live in its own brain loop of fanboys).

Nine. Critical thinking identifies fallacious thinking.

Ten.  Critical thinking is metacognition or The Third Eye, which addresses bad habits (student essay).

Eleven. Critical thinking repels pride. You can’t say to yourself, “I’m a critical thinker and people who aren’t like me are cave trolls.”

 

 

What Is Critical Thinking? An Introduction

On my first day of critical thinking class, I'd like to begin by defining critical thinking in terms of the market place of ideas, competing narratives for power and policy, the mythological view of things that creates the conventional assumptions and the deconstructed view that creates subversive views. 

I'd like to give examples of competing narratives in these areas:

compulsory schooling, to develop minds or to indoctrinate the masses into docile sheep?

vaccines, essential safety precaution or medical industry ploy that creates autism and other problems? 

Colombus, the man who "discovered" America or a barbarian. 

Thanksgiving, a time of peaceful exchange between the pilgrims and Indians, or a time of genocide?